


The Shadowhunters' Pet

by ashesandhoney



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4822091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For four years a cat lived in the London Institute. It never occurred to anyone that she might be anything but a pet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

[A prompt-less Ficlet]  
[With an odd premise]

Magnus was met at the door to the Institute by one of Charlotte’s little collection of Shadowhunter brats. He was quite a bit taller and a lot more handsome than he had been when Magnus had last seen him but he had a sneering smile on his face.

“Welcome,” he said in a tone that implied Magnus was anything but.

There were many possible responses but Magnus went with cheerfully ignoring the little bastard. Another pretty, arrogant Shadowhunter. He wasn’t even worth the effort of a response.

Deep inside the Institute, a place Magnus had rarely been and never enjoyed, he saw another side of William Herondale. They’d asked Magnus there in place of their own Silent Brothers to see about a dying boy. Will’s demeanor in the sick room was different. The way he softened and let his worry show made him worth a second glance.

He picked a gray and white cat up off the bed and held it almost like a child might hold a stuffed toy. The cat twisted to watch what was happening with gray eyes that were less catlike than Magnus's own. It set its paws on Will's chest and didn’t struggle against the grip. If Magnus had asked he was sure he would have recieved an answer about moving the animal out of the way and nothing more.

Jem Carstairs, the boy in the bed was dying and there was nothing more that Magnus could do for him that the Silent Brothers couldn’t. But he did what might be done to ease his suffering in the moment and the boy’s breaths came easier.

As he turned to leave, his gaze caught on Will still holding the remarkably patient cat. She purred quietly. So quietly that Magnus almost couldn't hear it but it must have been vibrating against Will's hands. Magnus stopped to scratch her head and noticed a silver collar around her neck.

“An unusual choice for a feline,” he said.

“The collar? She’s always had it, since Jem found her. It doesn’t open but it doesn’t hurt her so it’s never seemed a problem,” Will spoke without looking away from Jem. The cat was watching Magnus and the longer he looked at it, the more wrong those eyes were.

“She was a stray?” he asked.

“Yes, Jem found her in alley three, maybe four years ago. Is it so important now?” Will asked.

“She’s not like a normal cat,” Magnus said.

“She doesn’t mind being held. There are cats that like to be held,” Will said.

“It’s more than that. She is smarter than you might expect a cat to be. Opening doors and solving puzzles. She understands you when you talk. Leaves if you ask her to, can tell when she’s unwanted or when she’s needed,” Magnus said.

“She’s a clever cat. What is this about?” Will said with a shrug that wasn’t as careless. Magnus hadn't seen all those things, he was guessing and Will's response told him he was right. He did not want to be right about this. 

“She’s not a cat,” Magnus said.

Will lifted her up to hold near his face and turned her around like she was an artefact and he was an archeologist. He made a show of looking at her ears and her tail and her paws before declaring, “Cat.”

“Cat shaped, not a cat,” Magnus was sure now. The creature’s eyes kept coming back to him. He held out a hand and Will hesitated for a moment before passing her over. She tensed up but didn’t bolt or hiss. She was a cat. Not unnaturally heavy like some shapeshifters might have been, nor with any sort of demon’s mark hiding in her fur.

Just a cat with a silver ring around her neck.

Magnus set her down on the edge of the bed farthest from where Jem Carstairs was still sleeping. She sat without moving as he twisted the ring around her neck. Her eyes went up to Will and it was such a human expression of anxiety that Magnus felt a wave of nausea. No one had noticed. In more than four years, in a building full of Shadowhunters, no one had noticed.

This close he could feel that magic in the collar and how it kept her locked into that shape. She had to be a shapeshifter on her own. All the spell did was prevent her from changing again. He studied her. Was she a demon that he would regret unlocking or was she just an unlucky fae or a warlock having a bad decade?

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Ming Bai,” Will said. He had his arms locked over his chest and a flat expression. Magnus smiled. Bright white, but the phrase could also be used to mean understanding. Magnus didn’t know a lot of Chinese but he knew that much. 

“Are you ready, Ming?” Magnus asked, saying a little silent prayer that he wasn’t about to release a demon. He rationalized, negotiated with himself. Even hidden like this, a demon could not be inside an Institute. Besides she had spent four years letting surly Shadowhunter boys hug her like a teddy bear, she couldn’t be a demon.

He released the magic first and then forced the ring to open. There were runes on the inside and Magnus was careful not to touch them in case the did something to his magic as well. He placed it in his pocket to keep it from falling to the floor. 

Nothing changed and he started to doubt himself.

The cat slunk away, disappearing under the blanket draped over the bottom of the bed. Magnus crouched beside the bed and watched the little lump move under the beige wool. Just a cat hiding from a stranger. Maybe the collar did something else. Maybe he was going mad. 

But then the lump shuddered.

The first noise was a meow. A little like a cry and Magnus glanced up to see Will's eyebrows drawn together and a glare on his face. The next sound was painful and Magnus grabbed Will's sleeve before he could reach for her. The Shadowhunter turned that furious look on him but Magnus refused to let go. The shape under the blanket was trembling and the sound she was making had gone from that pitiful little meow to a yowl.  

"What the hell did you do to my cat?" Will asked.

"She's not a cat," Magnus said and let his own anger creep into his voice. They were all so young. The head of the Institute was barely 25 and all her Shadowhunters were children. Idiot children. They'd had an imprisoned person sleeping on the end of their beds and hadn't noticed. Four years. Magnus didn't think starting a fight with William Herondale would help anything but he almost did it. Once his anger would have exploded. He was older now, arguably he was smarter. He forced himself to ignore Will's rage and the Nephilim's blindness to anyone and anything that wasn't one of them. 

"What is she?" Will asked looking back at the yowling ball that was starting to change form. Realization and horror were dawning on his face in equal measure. Magnus didn't answer. His eyes were locked on the bed. The shift didn't happen easily. The size didn't change uniformly. An arm there and then tucked in close before the body was the right size to support it. Writhing and yowling in pain. When the first cry came out sounding human Will looked like he was going to throw up. Magnus understood the impulse.

It simultaneously happened fast and lasted far too long. When it was over, she was sobbing. Curled under the blanket where no one could see her and sobbing. Jem had shifted and half woken while the screaming had gone on and he blinked up at Will. Everyone was frozen in the aftermath of the horror. Magnus shook himself free first and stepped forward.

"Don't you dare touch her again," Will snapped back from his shock and stepped into Magnus's path.

"Wha's happ'ning?" Jem's voice was paper thin from the bed, "Who's crying?"

Will didn't answer him right away. He sat down on the edge of the bed and touched the raise in the blanket that was most shaped like a shoulder. Magnus wanted to stop him. If she was something horned or scaled in her true form, he didn't want the first thing she woke to to be someone recoiling in fear or disgust. After everything, she didn't deserve that no matter what kind of face she wore. But Will was so gentle that Magnus stood back and let him be the one to lift the blanket back.

She had brown hair, a very human colour, but Magus couldn't see anything else. She was still crying though it had slackened from the sobs of pain. Will touched her hair and she tilted her face up to look at him. She looked very human and very young but that didn't mean anything. Magnus looked very young himself.

There were footsteps in the hall and Magnus turned to see a very alarmed Charlotte Branwell burst through the door. She wore a gray dress and her hair was starting to come out of the bun it had been pulled into. Magnus stopped her before she started asking questions and pointed out into the hallway. She stepped out with him without fully taking in the room.

"What happened? Was that Jem screaming?" she asked in that voice that would have ordered Shadowhunters into battle. Magnus was too angry to let it affect him.

"No," he said. Will was young and stupid. If he remembered correctly both the Shadowhunter boys had come to London quite late and neither had been properly educated. There were allowances to be made for horrified children. Will's expression and his gentleness had won Magnus over more than he was willing to admit. Children being unskilled at recognizing a spell was one thing but he was feeling far less charitable about Charlotte.

"Well who was it then?" she asked looking up at him with tight lips.

"Your cat," he said.

"Jem's cat? Ming? That did not sound like a cat," Charlotte said.

"It did when it started but that was not a cat, Mrs. Branwell. You had a shapeshifter living under your roof, held in form by a little spelled collar round her neck. You treated her like a pet, patted her on the head and gave her warm milk I am sure but she wasn't a pet. She was a prisoner in her own body. How do you neglect to notice such a thing?" Magnus asked.

Charlotte looked shocked and Magnus waited for an answer for just a moment before turning and walking back into the room. He took a little bit of cathartic glee in slamming the door in her face. He schooled his expression and looked up. The boys had wrapped the girl in a dressing gown and the blanket and Will was sitting near her without touching. Even Jem, weak and confused, was watching her. She looked up at Magnus with a quiet curiosity and wide eyes that same gray blue as her cat eyes had been.

"I can take you away from here. I can help you find your people," Magnus said to her and she stared at him. He held out a hand to make the invitation more clear, unsure how much she actually understood. She drew just a little closer to Will. Magnus nodded and said, "If you ever change your mind. The invitation is open. They may not have been responsible but that does not mean that they can help you."

She held his gaze and then reached out a hand in a mirror of his gesture. He came toward her. She touched his face and looked at his eyes for a long silent moment as though there was some essential answer there. She swallowed and then opened her mouth a few times before giving up on the attempt at speech. Magnus's anger flared again, it had been a very long time since she had been in a position to speak at all and she seemed to have forgotten how. He nodded at her and she nodded back.

"I need to borrow William for a moment, I shall return him posthaste," Magnus told her and she looked at Will and then nodded. So she understood, that at least gave him something to be grateful about.

Out in the hallway, Will let the hints of anger he had been keeping tucked away in his down turned mouth and narrowed eyes out. Charlotte had gone off somewhere so they were alone in the hallway. Will stomped across the hall and punched the door there hard enough to dent the solid oak. He stood and flexed his fingers for a moment before doing it again. The impact echoed down the stone hall. 

"Are you finished?" Magnus asked.

"Who is she? Where did she come from? How did you know?" Will growled, rounding on him.

"I don't know, I alsodon't know, there was magic in the collar and she didn't behave like a cat," Magnus said with just as much veiled accusation as Will had used. They stood and stared at each other. Magnus kept his expression even and Will seethed.

"I don't know so much as what she is but she trusts you and you owe her," Magnus said, "Live up to that."

Then he turned and left the surly baby Shadowhunter glaring after him. He walked past Charlotte and a maid carrying a dress up the stairs and he didn't say a word. He kept going until he was out in the fresh air and drizzle of London. He didn't take the waiting cab the Institute had hired for him. He walked home in the hopes it might clear his head.


	2. Language Lessons (Jessa Cuddling)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pure indulgence writing. Lots of cuddling. Nothing happening. Poorly edited. Just the things I like.
> 
> I am dealing with making life decisions and that is making it hard to focus on my big stories which require thought and care. So this is my outlet writing. Nothing requiring too much effort, just some fun.

She had been a cat and she still wasn't quite sure how to be a girl. She had refused any efforts to put her in proper clothing, favouring nightgowns and refusing anything that required a corset or shoes. She had also kept nearly silent. If it weren't for the occasional noise of surprise or little sighs, it would have been easy to assume she was truly mute. The only sound she often was to hum softly to herself, tuneless and uneven when she was dozing off. It was almost a purr.

She padded into Jem's room with her bare feet peeking out from under the hem of her dress and he smiled at her. He was half undressed, his jacket and tie hung up and the first few buttons of his shirt undone. She looked at his discarded boots by the door and poked one with a bare toe and a look of disapproval.

"I like them," he told her.

She gave him a little smile and shook her head.

"I do, I'm not lying. They're comfortable and it's actually harder to run in bare feet," he said.

She crossed the room to him, leaving the offending footwear behind. She was striking. Plain in any one detail. Big gray eyes, brown hair with just a little bit of a curl to it, a narrow chin and soft cheeks. But together, all the little elements that made her, her were beautiful. He watched her and wondered if it showed on his face. She came to stand in front of him with their feet lines up on the rug before the fire.

She reached up and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. This was one of the things she had done that had made her seem so strange and alien when she had first become herself. It had taken a few times before he stupidly realized what it was, that was how people had always greeted her when she had come into a room. They had pet her head and scratched her eyes and so she returned the favour.

"How long were you a cat?" he asked her and she looked him in the eye and confusion chased across her face. Her fingers were still in his hair as she considered him. He didn't move. He didn't want to stop her or chase her away by saying the wrong thing. She understood. She understood everything and he suspected that she always had. That, in itself, was a little bit terrifying because he had whispered things into her fur while she purred against his chest that he had never been able to say aloud to anyone.

"How old were you before?" he tried again.

She considered him and then took a step back and looked him up and down. It was a disconcerting moment. Her attention on his body in a way he was pretty certain that no one considered him. She put her hand out like she was setting it on top of a table and then lined it up with his hip. His stomach turned. Not a table, a child's head. She'd been about waist high the last time she remembered being a person.

He caught her face in his hands and she tensed at the suddenness but didn't pull away. Her eyes were bigger and more alarmed than he had seen them. She had frozen. Her breathing had gone shallow.

"I am so sorry that we didn't know, that we didn't do anything," he said and he pulled her into a hug. She immediately relaxed. She lay her cheek on his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed in close. Her breathing evened out and she took a deep breath like she was trying to get the scent of him into her lungs. She murmured. It wasn't words, just a little protesting noise, like she wanted to disagree with him but couldn't find the words.

"I'm going to teach you how to talk," he told her and she tilted her head back without pulling away from him. He untangled himself from her and sat down one of the chairs by the fire. A normal person would have sat on the chair opposite him but no one had ever taught her that climbing into people's laps wasn't polite behaviour. Finding enough room for them both was impossible but he decided not to care. She was close. Close and warm and her face was so close to his neck that he could feel her breath on every exhale.

"You know all the words, you just need to get used to making the right sounds," he said once he had regained control of his senses beyond the ones telling him there was a woman in his lap. He held her as he talked and she pressed in close.

She was nervous about words and he wasn't sure why. She would whisper into his ear, whisper back single sounds, echoing him before getting embarrassed and tucking her face into his shoulder until he could coax her into another attempt. It took most of a week before she would answer him back in words and that was still soft. She stumbled over the shapes of the letters and slurred or cut off sounds in the wrong places and each time got frustrated and embarrassed.

"I won't think less of you for any reason, certainly not this, ," Jem whispered back to her one night when she had gotten frustrated with assembling sounds into longer words and had rolled into him to hide her face against his chest. They had taken to lying on the bed while they worked their way through pronunciation and stumbling letters. He should have cared more about how indecent it was but it was the calmest he ever saw her and he didn't want to take it away from her.

She lay on her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows and had the utterly distracting tendencies of kicking her feet and rolling over until her nightgown was hiked up past her knees. He was getting good at ignoring how indecent it was to have a woman sprawled across his bed in the middle of the night but it was harder to do when he could see her thighs.

Then she would do something like this, roll over and lay against him. He couldn't tell any more what was right and honourable. Sending her back to her own bed would have been honourable but she was so quiet and so distant from everyone that it seemed cruel to turn her away when she reached out for him. This was indecent but she was innocent of that and punishing her for it would have made him a monster.

She had been skittish as a cat, watching most people from a distance and really only allowing either him or Will to touch her. Since she had become human, Will had shut her out completely. He had refused to look at her, had shut doors in her face and ignored her when she tried to offer him anything. Jem had watched it wear at her. He'd never been so aware of Will's behaviour as he was when he watched her face fall as Will stormed away from her again.

So he had been kinder. He had spent years making up for Will and he tried to do it here as well, tried to give her all the support and warmth and attention she might need so she didn't have to give her heart to Will and get it back shredded. That was why he had let her stay. Why he had let speech lessons end not with walking her back to her room but with letting her fall asleep with her head on his chest and her arms draped around his waist.


	3. Research (Will Angst)

She had stopped trying to win him over. Stopped bringing him gifts of food or reaching out to touch his hand or even smiling when he entered a room. She was an open book, there were no secrets in her face, she had barely learned how to define her emotions let alone suppress or hide them. The big silly grins she gave Jem or the smiles she saved for Sophie, he had driven them away. She watched him with wariness now and it was killing him by degrees.

He had made her cry. Growled something rude at her and slammed the door in her face and she had stood outside it while she got herself back together. Will had just stood there and listened to it and hated himself even more than he usually did. If he had felt about someone else the way he felt about himself, he would have hurt them. He would have happily hurt someone for making her look that wary.

He could remember her when Jem had first brought her home. He had wrapped her in his jacket to keep her from scratching him and running which she had already done twice. The night had been sopping. Pouring rain and Jem had taken off his coat to go digging in the garbage for this cat. Will had mocked him, called him ridiculous but it hadn't stopped him. He had gathered her up and brought her home. For the first week she hid under the bed or sat on top of the empty bookcase in the spare room across from Jem's where they had shut her up. She ate the food they left and watched them but didn't come closer.

"You can't always tame a stray, Jemmy," Charlotte had said but that hadn't deterred him.

By the end of the second week, she would come down and take food out of Jem's hands but still wouldn't let him touch her. Will she would get close enough to sniff but he had to put the food down before she would take it. Anyone else, she hid from. It took time but once they'd won her over, she was loyal in a way unlike any other cat Will had ever met. She still didn't trust other people but she trusted them.

She had trusted them both. Now she just trusted Jem.

Will found himself going looking for her. He'd go and check the corners where she had slept as a cat because that was what he did when he needed comfort. He missed her. He missed being able to press his face into fur and talk without worrying that he would hurt someone. Sometimes he found her. She still sat on the same window seat in the library and finding her there, a girl in a dress instead of a cat with her tail over her nose had been like getting hit.

Will had destroyed years of trust and he still wasn't sure it was enough.

That was why he'd gone to Magnus Bane and that was why he had spent hours upon hours digging through books on demonology and avoiding everyone else. Her trust was gone but she still watched him like she cared. He had scared her away so that she wouldn't try and offer him comfort when he was having a terrible day but she still wanted to. He could see it. She saw him come into the room tense and angry and her eyes got sad and worried.

William Herondale had a curse and he needed it gone before he killed her and he was gambling that Magnus would be able to help. Magnus was not easy to work with and Will sometimes wanted to spin around and punch him in the face. Or he had. He was starting to find himself looking forward to meetings with Magnus, to raising demons and having disappointment crush him over and over. Magnus was becoming a friend.

"Where did she come from?" Magnus asked one night over the remains of a spell circle that had held a demon. The wrong demon. Always the wrong demon.

"What do you mean? We haven't figured out who turned her into a cat or why," Will said.

"You said she was a child when she was changed, a little girl who remembered having a brother and parents who carried her and kissed her on the nose when she cried. That sounds like a happy childhood," Magnus said.

"Jealousy?" Will asked letting the sarcasm into his voice because he couldn't always stop it, even when he didn't mean it. Magnus had gotten very good at ignoring it.

"People miss beloved children," Magnus said with a shrug, "Now get out of my house before you make a bigger mess."

After that, Will had gone looking. He started four years ago and gone back from there and dug through mundane archives until he found them. There were reports filed with the police, a newspaper article about the sad story of the kidnapped girl who was never seen again. Once he had names he had gone to find the actual people and any doubts were wiped away by a few hours of watching them. She had her mother's eyes.

"Jem?" he said pushing open the door to Jem's room. Will had expected that he would be asleep but there was music coming from his room. He was playing a soft piece of music so quietly it was like a lullaby. The strings of violin music drifted out into the dark but cut off as Will opened the door.

The girl was curled up on Jem's lap. He was propped up against a pile of pillows on the headboard and looked a little alarmed to see Will suddenly appear in his doorway. Will tried to ignore her. Her hair was braided and Jem had tossed a blanket over her. Her head was on his leg and one of her hands was twisted in the sheet beside him. Will didn't look at her. It took more effort than he cared to admit but he didn't look at her.

"Yes?" Jem said trying for normal and not quite making it. He carefully laid the instrument down on the bed to one side of her. His hand fluttered for a moment, like he was going to touch her but then remembered that Will was there. He folded his hands together and waited for Will to explain why he was barging in in the middle of the night.

"She's not actually a cat anymore," Will said and Jem coloured. Will wasn't sure he had ever seen Jem blush before.

"She doesn't sleep well on her own, she's been sleeping on my bed or yours for years. She's not hurting anyone here. Why do you suddenly care?" Jem said.

He spoke plainly as he might about the weather but Will could hear the anger in his voice. Jem had been the one to see the damage Will was doing. She would have gone to find Jem each time Will had said something rude or walked away from her or intentionally tried to scare her. Jem didn't push her away. Jem explained things to her, calmly and simply until she understood it. She spoke to him, which she did to almost no one else. Will dragged his eyes away from her.

"I found her family," Will said instead of attempting to explain anything else.

"What?" Jem said.

"I went looking, I found her family," Will said, "Her name is Theresa Gray. She was four when she went missing. She has one older brother, two younger brothers and a baby sister. I don't think the three younger ones were born when she was taken. She looks like her mother, same eyes and same hair. The father is a pretty high ranked clerk at a firm that makes cogs. They don't own a home but they do have a large flat. They seem like perfectly nice people."

"Theresa," Jem repeated looking down at her which Will took as permission to stare a little bit as well.

"I'm not going to tell anyone else," Will said, "Charlotte's still on her quest to find out who changed a girl into a cat and I think that is where we should be putting our energy."

"Why?" Jem asked, "It's good that you found her family why-"

"Because the Clave wants her out of here. They're already talking about how keeping a human girl here, even a victim of a crime like hers shouldn't be allowed. Charlotte won the battle to keep her here because there is no where to send her. If they know she has a family, they'll send her back there," Will said.

"And that's a bad thing?" Jem said.

"You think that she would thank us for sending her to live with strangers? She gets anxious when you aren't in the same room as her. I think you should tell her but I don't think that we should tell the Clave. Not unless it's what she wants," Will said. Then he got up and left because he wasn't sure he could watch Jem lean over and shake her shoulder until she smiled and blinked up at him. More than that, he wasn't sure he could handle the way that sleepy happy calm would shatter when she realized that he was was there as well.

He was tired but he couldn't go back to his room to sleep. He went down to the library to pull down another demonology book and start paging through it trying to find the right monster before he had nothing left to salvage.


	5. Stories (Wessa)

Will shouldered open his door, he had a book in one hand and mug of coffee in the other and hadn't stopped to put either down. He was going to read until he could convince himself that he was a character in a book. He tried this sometimes but it never quite worked but he just kept trying.

"I remember," a voice in the hall said.

Will's head snapped up but he contained his surprise before he actually startled and embarrassed himself. The girl who wasn't a cat stood across the hall from him. She had pulled her hair back in a braid and already pieces were escaping around her face, she couldn't maintain a hairstyle to save her life but it made her look soft and private somehow. Most people only ever saw their family look this unpolished. Her nightgown hung just a bit askew as though she hadn't thought to adjust it properly. She should have looked ridiculous. She didn't.

"Do you?" Will's voice was flat.

"I remember just about everything from when I was a cat. When I was sad or scared, it's harder but I understood you when you spoke to me," she said.

Will was very still. Book still open. Coffee cooling in his hand.

"I understood you," she said. "You've been walking and reading for three days. You're upset."

Will tried to find the pieces of his defenses to push her back but she crossed the hall to stand right in front of him, close enough to touch. She had never said this much to him. He wasn't aware she was capable of sentences. Her voice was soft and her words were slow as though she considered each one before it came out. He stared at her.

"Who can you talk to now that I'm human?" she asked.

"You're rather definitely not human, human shaped or not," Will said but the words lacked the edge he wanted them to have. His mind was turning too fast over the words, "I understood you," and their terrifying implications.

"I know," she said, "Would you rather I was cat shaped? Would that make it easier for you to talk to me?"

Then she did something he hadn't imagined that she was capable of.

She shifted.

She crumpled into her dress. Will did drop his coffee then as he stumbled towards her, his mind immediately going to all the horrible things that might have happened to her. He cut off the sound he made before it became a yell. She nosed out of the dress and was a cat again. Small and gray and she climbed up onto his shoulder in a single jump and balanced herself there and looked at him as though to say something smug. He stared up at her, his head cocked to allow it and she rubbed her head against his cheek.

This was too many shocks at once and Will's defenses wouldn't slide back into place around the realizations. He walked back into his room and pulled the cat off his shoulder by the scruff of her neck and unceremoniously dropped her on the bed. Then he backed up so his back was pressed against the bookcase and there was a lot of space between himself and her.

"You should leave," he said.

She shifted back.

Naked. There was a naked woman in his room and all her soft-edged gentle strangeness collapsed into anger. The quiet rumpled girl with the pretty eyes became something different for a moment as she stalked across the room to him and flashed her teeth at him. She didn't hiss or slap him. Caught between the human reaction and the feline one, she just glared at him but she was radiant. Bright and sharp in her anger.

"Stop hating me," she said.

Will stared at her.

"I don't," escaped before he could stop it.

"You don't kill people who love you. I love you. Jem loves you. We're not dead. I don't understand why you're so scared," she said.

"I'm not scared," he said on reflex, not realizing how childish it sounded until it was out.

"Will," she said.

It was the first time she had said his name. Her eyes were level with his, serious and not so angry anymore. She knew. Not everything, he'd never been able to bring himself to say everything but he'd told her about the curse, about his fears, about everything. For four years he had poured it all out into her fur and now she was a person. She was a person and she remembered all of it and could read his moods from a distance and he wasn't sure what to do about that.

He had almost forgotten she was naked, almost. He shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around her like a blanket and stood there with his hands curled in the lapels so she was held there in front of him. She just watched him.

"Very well, get dressed, I'll tell you a story," he said.

She smiled at him and his plan to walk around her and go get her nightgown fell apart. She was smiling and she hadn't ever done that for him before. He held her gaze as though she had hypnotized him. When she stepped into his hold and wrapped her arms around his neck in a hug, he stayed frozen but didn't push her away and she settled in closer so she could press her cheek against his chest.

"You need to get dressed, this is rather indecent," he said once his ability to string words together came back.

"Everything nice is indecent," she said.

"You would rather run around naked?" he asked.

"Yes, except when it is cold but when it's cold I don't want to run around at all, I just want to sleep beside Jem and I could do that naked," she said.

Will laughed at that even though she hadn't meant it as a joke and she cuddled in closer. He looped his arms around her and ignored her lack of clothing for a moment because he had missed her and she was warm and having someone to hold was too much for him to pass up. He hadn't realized how much having the little ball of soft warm fur to whisper his fears to had kept him sane. It hadn't occurred to him that the cat's unerring ability to tell when he needed her to cuddle up and purr at him was because she understood him.

"Please get dressed, I can't talk to you when you're naked, it makes me uncomfortable," he said.

"Very well then," she said.

Rather than go out to the hall and retrieve her own clothing, she went to his wardrobe and dressed herself in his clothing. When she stepped away from him, he turned around even she obviously wasn't concerned with modesty. He turned back to find her wearing a part of dark gray trousers, a white shirt that hung down past her hands and she'd put back on his jacket. She should have looked ridiculous but she didn't. He crossed the room to her and buttoned her cuffs to keep the shirt back from her hands and smiled at her in spite of himself.

She took his wrist and pulled him along to the bed and sat beside him and raised her eyebrows in an expression she must have learned from Jem, it had that same quiet patience.

"Tell me the story then," she said.

So he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviving this story and continuing it's tradition of being self indulgent and not meticulously edited. 
> 
> I just love the idea of Will's brain short circuiting because a naked woman was yelling at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly there will be a continuation? I haven't decided yet.


End file.
